News & Analysis
Planning skills make engineers good 'field operatives'
Sheila Riley
4/3/2008 11:39 AM EDT
SAN FRANCISCO — Engineers' personality traits make them excellent "field operatives"--that is, on--the-ground terrorists, according to an international security expert.
The connection between engineering and violent extremism is well known to terrorist groups and those who work to stop them, said Raphael Perl, who heads the Action against Terrorism Unit at the 56-country Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"Engineers ideally make excellent strategic planners, and they make excellent field operatives. They think differently from how other people think," Perl said from Vienna, Austria, where he is based.
Engineers may disagree, but they would be hard put to ignore Perl's statements. OSCE, the world's largest regional security organization, promotes democracy and conflict prevention, and includes non-NATO nations such as Russia and non-European Union countries such as the United States. The organization is seen as a growing and influential vehicle for the exercise of "soft power" in the anti-terrorism field.
Although not an engineer himself, Perl is a former fellow of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a long-time terrorism expert for the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
Engineers make good strategic planners because they think in terms of systems and networks. They make good operatives because they tend to be thorough and meticulous, Perl said.
Another quality many engineers share is the ability to keep quiet. "It's fair to say they're not perceived as super-social animals or the life of the party," Perl said. "They're not going to talk to a lot of people and brag about any terrorist activity they may be involved in."
Because of those traits, terrorist groups actively recruit engineers. That means engineers are exactly the people who need to be in on anti-terrorism efforts, Perl said. He flatly disagreed with comments made by engineers in a recent EE Times article. Those comments criticized an Oxford study, "Engineers of Jihad," which found terrorists in Islamic countries were more likely to be engineers than members of other professions.
The study argued that an "engineering mindset," coupled with harsh socioeconomic conditions in certain Islamic countries, could lead to participation in terrorism. Angry engineers challenged the statistical significance of the study's small sample and labeled it sloppy science.
But the reality is that engineers are overrepresented in terrorism, Perl said. Al-Qaeda is a clear example; it's widely acknowledged that a significant number of the group's top leadership had engineering backgrounds. Further, the terrorist organization works to attract engineers to its ranks, Perl said. While such groups might benefit from recruiting operatives with technical skills, the more fundamental qualities that define engineers and other tech professionals are the primary draw. "Al-Qaeda is actively recruiting from the engineering community because they like those qualities.They're increasingly recruiting engineers, scientists, chemists, people with medical degrees and people with technical backgrounds," Perl said.
It's not only in Islamic countries that this is happening, he said. Al-Qaeda is increasingly recruiting scientists and engineers, especially non-Muslims, and is doing so worldwide, according to Perl.
There are very strong government policy implications, he said: Engineers need to participate in anti-terrorism efforts. Networks-possibly multiple networks at once-will be the next al-Qaeda targets. That's where engineers could be a critical component of anti-terrorism work.
"Just like it takes a thief to catch a thief, it takes an engineer to catch an engineer," Perl said.
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halherta
4/3/2008 3:20 PM EDT
Engineers make good terrorists..... so what? Engineers also make good cooks, carpenters, problem solvers and even doctors....whats your point?
Politicians on the other hand...well lets just say the phrase "a good politician" is an oxy-moron.
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piege
4/3/2008 5:36 PM EDT
This is ridiculous... they are overrepresented in the top leadership ... who would you suspect to be in the top of any organisation ? aren't engeneering overrepresented in any high-administration?! ... I believe that if anyone would want engeneers on their side shouldn't link them to the opposite camp!
Please... stop putting people in little boxes ... it's the root of most wars and arguments in the world ...
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Zer
4/3/2008 9:23 PM EDT
Haha, right.
Okay, so since there are, supposedly, engineers in "Al Qaeda", the next attack will be on a computer network?
What kind of idiot hired this man? Has he no imagination? No, of course not, he's only worked for the government, so what makes him an "expert" is that he says he is one. That seems to be how it goes. Come on...
I think what these "terrorism experts" fail to realize is that it is impossible to have both a free society and a society where everything is protected. The reason the US is not in any trouble is that we're far away from that mess called the Middle East, and most people in most countries are in fact good people. That's the only thing that keeps countries from falling into chaos, and it always has been.
As for networks, if software is written securely there's nothing to worry about. I had read that power plants, etc. may be connected to the Internet, and that is pure idiocy. If that's the concern, well, there's a very easy answer and it is disconnecting them from the net. It doesn't take any government work at all.
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Moth
4/4/2008 6:11 AM EDT
ARRRGH!
"They think differently from how other people think"
Yes - unlike *YOU* Mr. Perl (!) we are CLEVER!
"It's fair to say they're not perceived as super-social animals or the life of the party," Perl said. "They're not going to talk to a lot of people and brag about any terrorist activity they may be involved in."
Like STUPID people would, you mean?!
I am not the next Einstein, but measuring my brain against Mr. Perl, I certainly feel like it!
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dbateman
4/4/2008 6:31 AM EDT
Engineers are good planners as the author of this report says. Just the skills you need not to end up being a dead terrorist. A few rounds of natural selection and its not surprising that in the group of terrorists who aren't dead, engineers are over represented.
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Faisal Mateen
4/5/2008 2:46 AM EDT
Lot of studies seem to be focusing lately on the engineering mindset coming from a certain relegious background. Irrespective of the limited scope amd validity of such report/studies, they get a lot of press coverage, typical of any contoversial topic. (surely not acheivable with normal topics) Good for the authors !!
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Faisal Mateen
4/5/2008 2:58 AM EDT
Excellent strategic planners: few engineers are deemed as good strategic planners. Only those engineers having loads of buisness acumen (MBA degrees definitely help) are considered excellent strategic planners by the companies
As for the field operatives, may be Mr. Perl can recommend FBI/CIA to hire engineers to become field operatives.. I can only laugh imagining how a techie would mess such a job :D
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pigling
4/6/2008 1:15 PM EDT
haha, i can't help laughing when i read the first paragraph. engineers are able to make more physical damage with the same cost because we pursue cost-efficient solution. i already admitted this fact during my first year in university. so i can't aggree with Mr. Perl any more that engineers are excellent strategic planners and field operatives. but a so-called security expert with decades of experience leads to such a conclusion that a fresh undergraduate already had before 911. what a great idea. great projects are outcome of cooperation among differnt teams but not just all engineering-related stuff. i hypothesize that Mr. Perl intends to highlight the important role of engineers in the anti-terrosism work. so i suggest we technical-training professionals just take it easy and wait for call from someone like Mr. Perl to help do something for the "great anti-terrosism work". we are deemed as monsters because "we are excellent strategic planners". then a stupid engineer without strategy-planning is really what we need for secruity today. yeah!!!
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Johnny Crab
4/6/2008 3:27 PM EDT
They needed a reason to put the REMAINING engineers in the US on a watch list?
A reason to round us all up later?
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vnevoa
4/9/2008 6:21 AM EDT
The author seems to have missed the most crucial point: we, engineers, are problem solvers. We have built society up faster and more consistently than any other social group. We make it happen. We ARE progress. There is no Progress without us, only staleness and then regression (back to the caves, probably).
Because of our special eye for detecting what exactly is wrong with a system, and "the knack" (as Dilbert said) for instantly designing a solution for the problem, we are often worried about the state of social affairs - we can see the socio-political-economic trends better than the average man, and often we firmly disagree with the political decisions made to address them. It is not by chance that you find so many engineers devoted to the political life over here in the old continent. A Politician cannot steer a community AND build the systems that it needs, whereas an Engineer can (We do both things everyday).
However, an engineer will typically "keep to himself" on political trends, mostly because he cannot do anything about it (except vote in a few years, or blow the public whistle if needed), so why bother analyzing a system he has not the power to correct?... This is the point where one might indulge in idiotic speculation (as Raphael Perl does) about the attractiveness of terrorism: sometimes, drastic problems call for drastic solutions, and Engineers tend to think they can fix anything - even a broken society.
So that is the crucial aspect of terrorism prevention: fix the socio-political-economic problem, and there will be no need for people to become terrorists in the first place. If the political class were competent enough, the asymmetries that create terrorists would not have such strength.
It's ironic, because the American terrorist-hunting habits and mechanisms are effectively worsening the situation and fueling the "anti-american" feeling worldwide, motivating the conversion of more misguided and displeased people into terrorists. You are giving them a big, fat, all-ranging target.
Want to stop terrorism? Help people. Don't hunt them. It's that easy. Of course, for that you would have to actually see past you belly button, and into a future more than 4 years away...
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